Flight 93 National Memorial delivers poignant, beautiful tribute ahead of 9/11 anniversary

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. – Time is growing like wildflowers over our collective memory of Sept. 11, 2001, turning an old brew of righteous anger and fear into something new and, if we’re lucky, easier to live with.

Painful? Sure, Sept. 11 is still that. The very idea of the attacks – the arrogance of the terrorists who decided nearly 3,000 lives were worth tossing away so they could make their statement, however insipid – continues to enrage any sane person who ponders it.

But there’s more to it now, too, not yet easy to describe but real all the same.

If that wasn’t clear earlier in our journey, during the previous 12 states and at least as many 9/11 memorials, it slapped us hard Wednesday, Sept. 9, when we drove into the parking lot of the Flight 93 National Memorial.

Various elements of this memorial cover 2,200 acres of verdant, beautiful field.

That’s the word that’s been connected to Flight 93 since it crashed here – “into a field,” news accounts said, repeatedly – 25 years ago.

But this land was more complicated than that, and it still is.

On Sept. 10, 2001, it was both a wild field and a strip mine, a mix that in this part of Pennsylvania isn’t as weird as it sounds.

A day later it was a crime scene, the exact spot where Flight 93 crashed after it was hijacked by terrorists and famously taken back by random civilians who likely prevented the plane from flying into the Capitol or the White House, roughly 13 minutes away by air. (“Hero” is painfully overused, but in this case it’s apt.)

After that, for a time, much of the field was seared and charred and steamy; scary and apocalyptic.

Then the decency campaign began.

Locals and others – the best of us, probably – reclaimed the strip mine, buried the debris, and planted seeds. After that, they let nature run riot.

Today, the memorial includes a 93-foot-high chime that plays a two-octave, jazzy kind of music when the wind reaches 12 mph. It also has a visitors center, where grandparents and school kids and everybody in between can see multimedia accounts from Sept. 11 and, if they notice it, a glass box filled with items found in the wreckage: a theater ticket, a student ID, a AAA Insurance card.

And, out in the field – a mile or so from the visitor’s center – is the memorial’s true centerpiece, a huge polished stone, shoulder-high and heavy. It’s fenced off and, on most days, only family members can go there.

A park worker said he doesn’t listen to music on his headphones when using his weed whacker anywhere near the stone. “It’s a sacred place. You can feel it.”

But everywhere else, the memorial is simplicity itself – trees, weeds, flowers, grasses. A wildflower or two.

It’s powerful.